To David Brooks, Revealing Government Crimes Is ‘Repellent, Unpatriotic’

On the Friday edition of the PBS NewsHour (4/18/14)–a show where, you know, you get a different take on the news–pundit and New York Times columnist David Brooks was asked to weigh in on the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to the Guardian and the Washington Post for their reporting on the NSA based on whistleblower Edward Snowden. And he did:

Well, you know, I find him repellent. If somebody talked about internal conversations at the NewsHour, or at the New York Times, and then broadcast them, I would find that person repellent, and doubly so when it’s national security secrets, after he’s sworn an oath to do so. So I’m no fan of him.

As for the press coverage and whether it deserves recognition, I guess I have sort of complicated views. I’m a little made nervous by the fact that they really did benefit by what I think of as a repellent, unpatriotic act.

This isn’t exactly new territory for Brooks, who once wrote a column about Snowden that mused about his failure to finish high school or visit his mother often enough (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/11/13), and called him a “grandiose narcissist” on the NewsHour (Extra!, 8/13)

Edward Snowden: Does he visit his mom enough?

Brooks did acknowledge that in journalism “a lot of our leaks and a lot of our best stories come from people who are betraying a confidence,” which I suppose explains why he says his views about giving an award to the journalists who reported the NSA stories are “complicated.”

A few things that are less complicated: Brooks seems to have a hard time seeing the difference between someone spilling the secrets of the New York Times or the NewsHour and someone who has exposed illegal and unconstitutional government surveillance programs (New York Times, 6/27/13; MSNBC, 1/23/14). That’s a little strange.

So, too, is his claim that Snowden had ever “sworn an oath” not to divulge “national security secrets.” As has been discussed elsewhere (New Yorker, 6/11/13; Press Freedom Foundation, 1/8/14), Snowden does not appear to have taken any such oath to work as a contractor for the NSA; his earlier employment at the CIA would have required him to take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

Snowden (Washington Post, 12/23/13) has said his whistleblowing was in part meant to uphold that oath, not violate it.

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Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

To understand Brooks, you have to understand that the government and the media have been expropriated by the filthy rich. Seeing the revelation of government crimes as unpatriotic shows Brooks for what he is: a sock puppet for the plutocracy.

As media activists, how should we monitor what’s produced by so-called “opinion writers” like this creature, David Brooks? In the New York Times, it can be difficult to distinguish the tone of columns in the Opinion section and front page “reports”. Opinion writing should not be dismissed flippantly – recall David Brooks cheer-leaded the US war in Iraq when he served the Weekly Standard as a senior editor. From what I understand, we should monitor opinion content produced by so-called establishment media outlets at least as much as any other type of media content. I hope to improve my understanding by reading responses by fellow activists here.

Corporate newsmedia pundit David Brooks doesn’t understand what the job of journalist should be. As far as patriotism, any American ought to be cognizant of the demise of Democracy in his/her country. The spreading of propaganda for the plutocracy misses the point.

What David Brooks finds repellent about Edward Snowden is 1) Snowden’s IQ, which is about three times that of Brooks; 2) Snowden’s moral courage, something Brooks vaguely realizes makes him look like the cowardly, self-serving toady he is.

I went back and read some of their top pieces on this.They avoided thee most important fact as if it were the plague.Never mentioned it.So I say their coverage was misleading, and in fact a lie.You are probably wondering what it was they missed.Well here it is.Mr Snowden went their to steal as much as he could BEFORE he had any knowledge at all what it was he would be stealing!A whistle blower finds lawless evidence- and turns it over.He stole millions of bits of data first….then later was happy to find something was actually found in all those purloined documents.OOps…is it not funny that the paper missed that small fact. A senator lies and cheats his way into office with a purpose.That senator steals all Obamas papers off his desk and hands them to the press who actually finds some wrong doing.Off he runs to Russia.Does the left see him as a hero I wonder.

Patriotism is love of country. Do not confuse it with love of or tolerating your government. “Right or wrong, my country” is not and never will be “my government, right or wrong.” when your government is wrong you must attempt to change it.

I place Snowden and Manning in the same category as Daniel Ellsberg: all genuine patriots. A patriot is one who does not say, “My country, right or wrong” but “My country to set it right if it’s wrong.” Totalitarian states do not permit dissent nor do fascist states. Fascism has become fashionable to Americans since the Republicans and many Democrats have embraced it whole heartedly with the armed aggression against a defenseless Iraq to seize its oil. The Bush embraced the fascist-Nazis’ program of torturing, rendering and murdering prisoners of war. Naturally credit is due to Cheney too for his endorsing fracking: the process of making a few bucks by poisoning our underground water. No whistle blowers on that one!